So where is the problem?
Google has called every client of ours (for whom we already manage AdWords campaigns) and attempted to convince them that they would do a better job then us.
Putting aside if an AdWords manager hired only weeks ago can give more efficient and better service then us (we have been running AdWords for major Israeli businesses for over three+ years).
Why does Google Israel contact client who already maintain AdWords accounts and are completely satisfied?
Early this week i spoke to Mayer Brand head of Google Israel at a local Internet Conference in Tel-Aviv and he assured me that they where contacting only 'selected clients', i relayed him that the clients he was contacting where already on AdWords, he responded that he would look into it.
I have been contacted by four major clients of ours who told me the same story, Google is consistently calling us asking for the CEO in an attempt to have the client move the accounts to Google?
That sounds evil to me...
when you are kid, you dont care about money but when you grow, it's all about money, right?
Being in sales myself, I suspect it's salespeople trying to 'get spend under management' so they can get quota credit for existing spend - taking the easy way out, so to speak.
-Shorebreak
Overall this is really good for our industry, they're raising awareness and bringing valuable [Google] services to the local market that to-date where only offered abroad.
My only qualm is that there are enough large local organizations that they can target who are not yet utilizing search engines marketing/advertising, i see no advantage at [also] targeting those that already have AdWords Accounts.
While it is true that SEM companies like ours take a [very] small management fee for maintaining and running the AdWords Campaigns, where as Google is pitching that we are eating-away at the clients budget, i think that its a valuable service to have someone [Google Certified] to maintain the campaigns.
R
Remember: they're sales critters. Actually manage a campaign? And all that nerdy tech stuff? No way!
One of them totally screwed a client's acct. They didn't understand that tracking code stuff. They thought it was all misspelled, so they ran it through spellcheck and uploaded it. Several thousand keywords got dumped. Luckily, I had a copy of the previous bulkupload and we were able to restore the acct.
Does anybody else think that using the client center might be detrimental to your business?
Google has access to all your clients and all the campaigns and keywords you are running for them. It would be pretty easy to just go down those client lists and call all the clients offering them the same service at a lower price....
Also, it is unwise using Google to manage your marketing spend as that will likely decrease your client's ROI and increase Google's.
Also, there seem to be several major advantages of using an agency versus having Google directly manage your account:
1) The agencies incentives are more closely aligned with the clients; we are being paid to manage accounts and have an incentive (i.e. the client's success) to making things work and keeping the client happy (i.e. paying us).
2) We manage more than just AdWords campaigns; having Google manage just your Google campaign is an incomplete solution (and having another entity manage other campaigns would make for an awkwardly balanced overall search engine marketing effort, as we constantly compare, for example, Google and Yahoo results and shuffle spending to the more efficient areas).
3) Agencies have access to tools (whether internally developed or third party) that Google's optimizers obviously aren't going to be employing.
Got a little off on the "why we're worth it" tangent but completely agree that it is a shady practice that these sales people appear to be employing. I am surprised that the higher ups (i.e. higher than the Google Israel office) have not cracked down on these practices.
Mike
Ron
It seems that Google is 'uniquely' targeting those companies that already maintain AdWords accounts.
We run AdWords campaigns for about 50 well known and large companies in Israel in a host of industries, Google has proactively called most of them..
I have to say - I really do not like this. You work hard to get the clients, then the "big boys" come to the new local office and just try to steal your clients.
This is very unfair and silly strategy - they make few bucks more, but destroy the good relationsip they could have with their local partners.
I just can not believe that this is Googls's offical policy.
But it's the result of their commissions policy. If sales critters get paid on commission, they will do whatever it takes to get more commissions.
Attention should be brought to the right people regarding these practices. Google should be working hand in hand with us, not fighting over clients. Bringing awareness to search marketing and Google Adwords is beneficial to all; this, clearly, is of benefit solely to these regional sales offices and their employees.
Mike
It's not their official policy.But it's the result of their commissions policy.
OK. It's not their official policy, it's only the result of their commissions policy.
Hm, not big difference from local's partner point of view - the result is still the same silly behaviour that hurts the trust and relationship.
It may not be Google's "official policy" but what is the official policy for dealing with these sales reps? If Google does not fire them and just turns a blind eye to it then stealing clients might as well be Google's official policy.
Someone from Google should respond and set the record straight on this as this is a very serious issue.
AWA can you clarify if Google salespeople outside the US are allowed to target the clients of others?
I'm sure we'd all like to know what Google's stance is on this.
You better not hold your breathe waiting for any official response from Google.
I don't expect them to respond. Still I figured it was worth a try.
A response would be good pr. I'm afraid pr only means "page rank" to Google, however.
My concerns were not only if this is ethical but if we should be worried about Google pushing up the market prices by participating as a competitor on their own Ad network!
Does anyone else see a moral dilemma that Google has inside information about other users successful keywords campaigns and can profit from our previos track records for each keyword?
Won´t Google competing in the market inflate prices. Google can in theory dominate all Keywords as they can easily pay $100/click back into there own pocket?
Tell everyone you know not to use Google anymore.
Naaaa....but "tell everyone you know" how bad they have become and the information they keep collecting just about anyone and anything. Information they later use to get into your pocket even deeper. Tell everyone you know how they are slowly but surly choking millions of businesses world wide with their questionable business practices.
Just call the baby by it's name. This octopus arms are way too long and it will eventually suck your very own livelihood if you don’t.
I checked out your thread about Sweden. This seems to be happening in a lot of countries.
I'm really surprised more people are not upset about this. This is a serious conflict of interest.
Did you manage to keep any of the clients that Google contacted, or did Google manage to steal all of them from you?
I'm really surprised more people are not upset about this. This is a serious conflict of interest.
And before you know it the adwords department will start asking the crawl department to stop crawling competitors on the free serps so they can present better figures to their (our stolen) clients, then ask the bigdady department to send the competitors supplemental and then ask the site map department to penalize them to hell.
Ho hang on...aren’t they already actively doing those things?
What I am worried about is that Google will/is doing this for many businesses in the same niche, for example travel. If you get 10 companies all bidding on "travel to widget" whats going to happen? Bid prices will increase, Google makes more and independent consultants have to pay more for our clients to get the same results!
I don´t think people are taking this serious enough!
Bids are on the way up due to Google pumping in extra clients all bidding on the same words... price fixing you bet, manipulatining the market ..yep! Evil... down right nasty I would say!
And what was the policy about have multiple accounts and bidding on the same keywords? ... Not for the Google guys.
- Timaruman
